Pynchon Intrigue Abounds Over ‘Cow Country’

“Cow Country,” a 540-page satirical novel about a dysfunctional community college, landed with a thud when it came out in April. It has amassed all of two reviews on Amazon in the months since its publication, and has been largely overlooked by critics.

In an essay on the website for Harper’s Magazine, the critic, Art Winslow, argued that Mr. Pynchon had pulled a sly prank on the literary establishment by publishing “Cow Country” under the pen name Adrian Jones Pearson, partly to prove that no one would bother reading a novel by an unknown writer.

It was a compelling theory, one that seemed in keeping with an author known for his playful high jinks. (Mr. Pynchon has made a cameo appearance on “The Simpsons,” in which he voiced a disguised cartoon version of himself, and narrated a book trailer for his novel “Inherent Vice.”) And thanks to the air of mystery that has long surrounded Mr. Pynchon’s persona, it was given credence by some online.

Unfortunately for lovers of conspiracy theories, and for readers who might leap at a new Pynchon novel, Mr. Winslow’s bombshell may not be much of a revelation.

Mr. Pynchon’s publisher, Penguin Press, and his literary agent, Melanie Jackson, who is also his wife, swiftly shot down the suggestion that he was behind the book.

“He did not write ‘Cow Country,’ ” Ms. Jackson wrote in an email message.

The literary critic Steven Moore, who wrote a blurb for “Cow Country” after the author sent him a copy, was likewise unequivocal regarding Mr. Winslow’s claims.

“He’s wrong — it’s not Pynchon,” Mr. Moore said, adding that he knows the identity of the author, who wishes to remain anonymous.

Mr. Moore said the author contacted him about a year and a half ago. The author thanked Mr. Moore for mentioning one of his earlier books, which he published under a different name, in Mr. Moore’s study “The Novel: An Alternative History.” He later sent Mr. Moore the manuscript for “Cow Country.” Mr. Moore liked it and provided a blurb. Mr. Moore said the author had tried and failed to find a literary agent and was unable to place the book with a traditional publisher. He eventually published it through the mysterious Cow Eye Press.

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“It’s not some clever mastermind scheme he planned,” Mr. Moore said.

After Mr. Moore passed along a request for an interview, the author, using a Google email address created for his literary alter ego, responded to questions. He was coy when asked whether he was Thomas Pynchon, and called the question “irrelevant.”

“Like any contemporary novelist, I am a manufactured construct,” he wrote.

Declining to identify himself, he noted, “I have aspired to make my authorial persona as transparently false as possible.”

It’s not entirely surprising that Mr. Pynchon’s name would come up in connection with a wild bit of literary performance art. Conspiracy theories, elaborate cover-ups and paranoia are recurring threads in his work, from his acclaimed early novels, like “The Crying of Lot 49,” to more recent, pulpier books, like “Inherent Vice” and “Bleeding Edge.” For decades, he has shunned the spotlight, dodging photographers and rarely granting interviews.

While the air of mystery surrounding Mr. Pynchon has helped fuel debate over whether he might have secretly written a new novel, scholars who have studied his work remained unconvinced.

“The supposed evidence for Pynchon’s authorship doesn’t strike me as at all plausible,” John Krafft, an associate professor of English at Miami University in Ohio, said in an email message. “The whole strategy or game doesn’t sound like one Pynchon would bother with.”

Steven Weisenburger, author of “A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion,” said the online interviews with the creator of “Cow Country” showed an entirely different authorial persona from Pynchon’s. “It didn’t sound like him at all,” he said.

So how did Mr. Winslow come to his conclusion that Mr. Pynchon wrote “Cow Country”?

Mr. Winslow said he came upon the novel the usual way: He received a copy in the mail to review. He didn’t read it right away, then later glanced at a few pages out of curiosity. The novel, about a hard-up educational administrator who lands a position at Cow Eye Community College and faces the task of uniting its fractious faculty members, seemed zany, intelligent and carefully constructed. It featured wacky names, like Dimwiddle — a Pynchon trademark — and recurring jokes about obscure topics that seemed plucked right out of a Pynchon novel, including riffs on the Esperanto language, vegetarianism and tantric sex.

“I was five pages into it and I thought, My God, this is Pynchon,” he said in an interview. He looked up the author, who has claimed to have published other books under other names, and the publisher, Cow Eye Press, and realized it was a vanity press incorporated in Wyoming. A Google search turned up a fake Facebook page and mock interviews with the author online, in which Mr. Pearson claims that his goal is to “manufacture disposable authorial personae for every book.”

Mr. Winslow said he framed his argument as a question, and never set out to prove his point definitively. He did not try to verify his claims by contacting Mr. Pynchon’s agent or publisher. Despite their denials, he remains convinced.

“If you try to get some indirect response out of him, it may be in his interest to say no, because if he wants to establish another name, why would he fess up?” Mr. Winslow said. “Unless he stood in front of me and said he didn’t write it, short of that, there’s not really a lot to dissuade me.”

The author, meanwhile, insists that he was not trying to imitate Pynchon.

“I was attempting to mimic Doris Lessing,” he wrote in an email, “though it did not come out as planned.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Pynchon Intrigue Is Writer’s Lucky Day. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe